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SilentBob4 writes "Mad Penguin is one of the first to review the latest Mozilla Firefox release, numbered 0.9. According to the reviewer, there's a lot to be thankful for, as this release is far more stable than its earlier versions and sports some new features along with a new interface. My new all-time-favorite line: 'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put."

'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'

Unfortunately, the most feature-rich products do not always get to be standard-setters. <thinking>countless examples</thinking> It often takes loads of marketing hype and product leverage to leap over the competition, something that Firefox doesn't have in spades.

I love Firefox. The best it can do--at least IMO--is raise the bar for commercial browsers. I do hope I'm wrong on this point, however.

It's pretty much decided that our 150+ employee company will be running mozilla firefox. Now, I understand that our little 150 employee company doesn't mean all that much in the big scheme of things, but if we're doing it, there has to be lots more that are also considering and/or doing it.

At my work with 250+ users, we are coming very close to making that decision. Part of the reason is that we have a number of users out in the field for long periods of time using laptops in the middle of nowhere. For the most part, any internet connections are dial-up.

So, part of our reason for seriously considering moving is that we've had a number of trojans on those machines exploiting IE holes. This combined with the pain of downloading MS patches on dial-ups is leading the IT department to lean toward a FireFox standard. One of the things that had been holding us back was problems with the iNotes client in FireFox 0.8. It works in 0.6, not 0.8. Well, it is working again in 0.9.

I helped push the use of Firefox on the vast majority of machines where I work. The amount of malware finding its way onto the systems of users who don't know any better has been substantially reduced.

I found it harder to push the use of Mozilla on users (just for testing) than it was to push FireFox when we decided to go with that browser. Users seemed to be put off that Mozilla looked different enough to "scare" them where Firefox looks more modern and has more similarities to IE which helped ease the transition. In fact not a single person complained once FireFox fired up.

This isn't to say Mozilla is a poor browser but to users who don't have an understanding of why using an alternate browser to IE is a good thing, superficial changes seem to matter much more than any functional feature.

IE will send your local OS credentials (username, password hash) via NTLM depending on your Security zones. The default is that sites in the Intranet zone will be sent them automatically and sites in the Internet zone will prompt for name and password. That sounds good and all, but a quick read of the Bugtraq archives will show that people are finding holes in this all the time. If you can get some piece of web content to load in the Intranet zone or even worse the My Computer zone, it's game over. The reason for the My Computer zone is that Internet Explorer == Windows Explorer and the web browser == the file manager.

Still, the whole complaint of entering your password again is tiny compared to the risks of IE. It's the *same* password that people use to log in. It's not like they have to remember a *new* password which is understandably a much bigger complaint.

Firefox and mozilla support NTLM authentication on all platforms, and have done so for the past couple of releases. They don't however pick up credentials from the OS, so you have to log in seperately with firefox. This is a feature, as a browser that sends credentials before being asked to do so is a security risk.

This is yet one more broken authentication scheme from M$. If you use NTLM authentication, your network is swiss cheese. There are many articles on the Internet that explain this. You are continuing Microsoft's bad security practices. If you want to authenticate without relogin in, use standard X.509 certificates. Both Windows 2000 and 2003 server support this for login. This will both improve your network security, and allow you to move to FireFox which is much more secure than IE. Firefox is even more secure than IE with WinXP SP2.

It often takes loads of marketing hype and product leverage to leap over the competition, something that Firefox doesn't have in spades.

Or including the browser with the OS. Hell, even I know better than most users, and I use Safari on my mac because a) it came with it b) has the best OS integration and c) it pretty much works.

Camino is a close second, it might be better with future releases. I'm not sure if I have the newest Firefox on my mac, but the one I have doesn't even create a window. Mozilla isn't that pretty on osx either.

I've actually very recently switched from Safari to Firefox as my Mac default. Every so often I miss SnapBack -- but all the major features are very comparable, the rendering engines seem equivalent in speed, and Firefox's typeahead link selection can really be a great thing. The bookmark importer that I found even set up the toolbar bookmarks about the same way mine were set up in Safari, so I don't notice the UI change as a dramatic difference. Once Firefox is set up as the browser default it's just as "integrated" with the OS as Safari is. And, Firefox's current iterations are quite pretty.

I also switched from Safari to Firefox about a week ago. I am in shock with how easy it was for me to switch over and not look back. My favorite features so far are the custom search engines I can add and also the ability to hide images by host.

I also like how if you open a bunch of tabs it reports all the dead tabs one after the other instead of having to go to each dead tab to OK the error message. And it is very nice to have the "Open in Tabs" in each bookmark folder instead of as a toggle in the bookmarks manager.

I was wondering why Apple decided to mix its aqua style with brushed metal. It just doesn't seem like a natural mix. Sort of like if Kiss walked into the scene in the matrix where that control room is all white/black/transparent computer environment.

Thankfully Apple did do a good job and making sure the look was very clean without any bad pixel/widgets that you wouldn't expect to be that way. For example, whenever I theme anything else (whether it be windows, gnome, kde, whatever) I always end up with some application with a weird looking widget.

I must say it was quite a relief when I replaced Safari with Opera 7.50. This after trying Firefox, Safari and whatever the last version of Opera working with OS X was. (That one was just too crash-prone to be usable). AFAIK, only Opera handles windows/tabs the way I want it to. That is, it never creates a new window unless I specifically tell it to. If I'm browsing and a link from a site wants to open an additional page without replacing the old one, it comes in as a new tab. End of story.

Are you fucking kidding me? Pick any web developer and ask them whether they have more problems making websites work with IE or making them work with Mozilla. They'll ALL tell you that IE is a pain in the ass and doesn't comply to standards. I, personally have given up on making my own webpages work with IE, it's not worth the effort...

I agree completely; IE has big problems when it comes to some things. Most notably, it has trouble with even moderately complicated CSS and transparent PNG's. It is quite frustrating when you spend hours working on a page which looks perfect in mozilla, only to find IE is messing up some of the most basic parts.

Perhaps when you're making your own personal webpages, you can feel free to ignore IE, but if you're working for a corporation, you don't have a choice.

My company works in the financial industry, and has the normal people you would expect visiting their websites. Bankers, high level management, marketing, etc. Over 90% of our browsers are IE. The only browser we are forced to support on every single page is IE. Once in awhile we can let slip a feature that will display oddly in Mozilla or Safari, but IE we're forced to have 100% compliance with. We therefore all have many versions of IE installed on our machines and do our day to day development using IE. While I wouldn't mind having another browser compete with IE once again, I don't see Mozilla or any other browser competing any time soon for the standard population.

It's like this. "We've detected you're not using a standards-compliant browser. While some features of this website will be available, we suggest you upgrade to one of the following browsers:.

But, as this week's Slashdot saying goes, there's the rub: people don't want to be told they're wrong, and web sites that patronise their audience get their window closed. Any commercial organisation's web site is likely to be focused primarily on one thing, and one thing only: sales. Achieving those sales is incompatible with trying to "educate" their users, and very unlikely to achieve a better return in terms of boosting sales from the five vistors a week who use non-IE browsers. Ergo, as much as we all hate it, their management has entirely the right mentality.

If you were going to do that, I'd suggest going back to the old-fashioned "Designed for..." logos at the bottom of the page, since at least a few people might remember them. Then again, those people are probably using non-IE browsers already anyway, and everyone else will probably go "What's Mozilla?" Sad as it is, you're never going to win this one by out-PRing Microsoft.

Before it said something akin to "IE4.0 or Netscape 4.0 or better", but if you tried to use IE6, Netscape6, or Mozilla (any version) you were directed to the "you must upgrade to IE4.0 or Netscape 4.0 or better" page....then if you call to complain they say they haven't tested the page for security flaws in the new browsers yet. (which I could under stand in the first few weeks of a new browser's life, but when it's getting to the point where it's impossible to download a browser that still works with it...

IE does not support standards at all. Sorry. Not even it's own. I've tried getting a page to look right in IE 5, 5.5, and 6 with simple CSS, and each one displayed it differently. This is CSS 1 stuff mind you. Finally gave up and hard coded it into the html. IE is a piece of shit, and any good web developer knows it.

No offense, but if you want people to take you seriously, you need to present your argument clearly, and preferably with relatively few cusswords.

That aside, SIGALARM was right. IE is, in essence, its own standard. What matter if 6.0 supports different features (or the same features differently) than 5.5? Guess you'd better upgrade your browser by purchasing a new computer and getting the latest MS OS.

I'm sorry, but MS really does dictate the market standards at this point. Trust me, I work for a fortune 100 company, and I can tell you that our websites are designed around IE. Our internal sites contain code to prevent viewing in any other browser in an attempt to minimize incompatibility. Nobody (at least, I think nobody) is arguing that IE is pretty horrible browser implementation; however, it's also the standard to which one must comply. Such is life.

I was a web developer before I switched to being a sysadmin, and while you make some good points, you also make some basic errors:

You must conform to IE; it's > 90% of the browser market, to "give up on IE" is to admit you create shoddy sites or intranets.

Is a 100% W3C-compliant site shoddy if it doesn't render properly in IE, or is IE shoddy? I agree with you that for commercial websites, they have to render properly in IE because of its overwhelming market share, but IE, and least in the days when I was last a web developer, was well-known to break W3C compliance all over the place. I would be pretty surprised if anything has changed. To call a site shoddy because it won't render in IE even if it's clearly the browser's fault because the site is just wrong thinking.

Sadly, Netscape/Mozilla in those days wasn't fully W3C-compliant either, but it did a much better job than IE. To make a site really perfect for both required (and probably still requires) some Javascript magic to serve up a page that is broken in the right ways for the target browser. This can be necessary on a commercial site, for obvious reasons.

However, on a site that is your own personal page, it is perfectly justified (and I have done this) to just put up a notice that says "This site is 100% W3C-compliant; if it doesn't look right in your browser, get a better browser." That's telling it like it is, and you have no obligation to do anything else on your personal site.

IE doesn't conform to standards?

Well, since Microsoft has been a W3C member for years, then it's about time they get off their asses and fix their browser. That doesn't mean it can't also render MSHTML (that horrid, crufty mess), but as a starting point, it must render W3C-compliant sites correctly. To do less is to just admit they created (and continue to release) a shoddy browser.

I can give you the stats for 7 websites that I run (all done with AWStats 6+) - last month, IE averaged 92% of browsers, Netscape at 1.9%, mozilla at 1.5%, firefox at 1.4%, safari at 1.2%, opera at 0.6%, and others filled in the rest. Interestingly, I've had 8 hits from "MSIE 7.01"... I don't know if that's a bot or a faked UA, or maybe the XPSP2 developers browsed one of my sites?

The sites average around 100,000 uniques a month all together, 4 of which are business sites and 3 of which are "fun" sites. I can tell you that IE has averaged between 90% and 96% per month for the last 12 months. Let me know if you want more detailed stats.

But just because a browser is identifying itself as IE doesn't mean it is IE. If you don't identify as IE every so often a site will return a "You can only view this site with IE version 6.0 or above." or some such nonsense. Spoofing your browser to identify as IE is a standard response to getting on with life.

The sites average around 100,000 uniques a month all together, 4 of which are business sites and 3 of which are "fun" sites. I can tell you that IE has averaged between 90% and 96% per month for the last 12 months. Let me know if you want more detailed stats.

Yes, but what are the sites? Windows Software sites?

We're a daily newspaper, we get way more than 100k unique visitors a month. We are seeing around 80% IE. Mozilla based browsers make up the second largest (15%), with safari at 2% or so. I think it's a pretty good estimate considering we don't even do tech news, so our visitors really are john q. public.

But you can't even say that all 80% of those users use IE6, it's really only around 30%, with the other 50% using IE5.5 5.0 and 4.0(!). So even just developing for IE is a pain in the ass because you're really developing for 4 different browsers.

It's certainly true that Firefox is more standards complaint. Unfortunately, it's also irrelevant, since way too many web authors don't care about standards.

There are many, many web pages that are authored in Front Page, run on IIS and look great on IE and like crap on everything else. Giving up and refusing to run alternate browsers in order to reduce headaches is in many ways a cop out. It makes the problem worse, since no one is slamming the webmasters for non-working pages. But it's easier, and when it comes to standing on principles or putting bread on the table, principles all too often take a back seat.

IE's second biggest quirk is it's (semi) lack of PNG alpha. Yet, why exactly do you need to be using 32-bit images on your page? It's quite easy (and beneficial for download speeds) to get by with 8-bit images. JPEG does better for photographs, anyway.

I mostly agree with you - I've developed, or caused to be developed, lots of web pages. They work fine in Opera, IE and Firefox/mozilla.

PNG, however, supports 8-bit transparency on 8-bit images (technically resulting in a 16-bit image file, of course.) Not just for 24-bit images.

The advantage is huge - you can lay an image with all manner of nice features (shadows, antialiased edges, feathered cameos, just as a few for-instances) over any backdrop. As a result, there are lots of graphics instances where PNG is a much better choice (feature-wise) than GIF, likewise better than JPEG. For some things - like antialiased edges on typical objects - the nature of the transparency information results in very high compression, and there is almost no transfer overhead for the extra 8-bit plane. Transparency doesn't cost like byteplane data does, at least, not typically.

However, IE is the big dog. Until/unless PNG works correctly right out of the gate with IE, the typical business sites you see it on will be *nix business sites.

Case in point: I am a big Linux fan, and I also head a company that makes a product for Windows on the order of Photoshop. We've got a huge number of web pages; there are absolutely no PNGs on them (despite the fact that our software broadly supports PNG, and can even create MNG animations.) Why would I allow our web folk to put an image format on a page that will make the page look bad??? We're trying to sell a graphics product!

I won't allow the use of anything but JPG, GIF, HTML, CGI form elements, and server-side scripting (previously perl, now python) on a web page. Solves all manner of problems. No Flash, no PDF, no JAVA, no Director, no ACTIVEX, no CSS - no nothing but the basics. And you know what? It hasn't interfered in the least with our ability to get what we want on a web page. Almost every browser on the planet can read our pages, and no one ever has to go rooting around for a plug-in or otherwise have their browsing experience interrupted.

For PNG, I would extend the allowed image set to include it if IE supported it. Because there are advantages to be had there for us as page designers that cannot be easily achieved otherwise.

PNG's greatest misfeature is that it does not support animation. For that, we have the latecoming, and much more narrowly supported, MNG. That'd be awesome to have too, but if MS can't even support PNG in IE, I don't have much hope for MNG.

Sure, IE has some quirks (did you know that you can turn most of these off using the proper DOCTYPE?). But it's not a "pain in the ass" to develop for.

I beg to differ. It is a royal pain in the ass, especially if you're trying to support different versions of IE.

Frankly, unless you're building some fancy site with the absolute latest CSS and Javascript features, IE will render your page *just fine*.

Hardly! IE barely renders straight HTML fine, and heaven forbid if you want to do anything as advanced as -- GASP! -- DHTML.

The biggest consumer for IE -- the biggest, most inflexible consumer for IE -- is corporate... and who the hell is developing web pages without CSS or Javascript anymore? Not corporations, that's for sure. They can barely get by without rendering each page entirely in Flash -- mostly, because IE is so broken and it is such a pain in the ass to write pages for that it is easier to use Flash.

Much of what CSS IE doesn't outright ignore, it renders incorrectly, and it can't handle much of the Javascript DOM API consistently. It'd be one thing if it was at least broken consistently, but it isn't. Javascript is enough of a pain in the ass to develop in without IE's quirks causing more confusion.

So, what's your problem with IE. Name the areas where IE doesn't conform to standards *in standards compliance mode* and tell me why they play such an integral part of your development process that you cannot find a way around them.

You're serious? Read what you just wrote. You're trying to tell me that me being forced to code around bugs in IE isn't a pain in the ass? How do you define "pain in the ass", in your world?

There is simply no excuse for how poorly IE complies to W3C standards, and it isn't even funny to try.

You must have something seriously weird on your systems. I've been using Mozilla and/or Firefox for over a year now on several machines on XP and 2000, and while I have an occasional problem with Firefox (fewer problems than with IE, though), I never had any installation go bad.

3. You're absolutely right here. The thing about IE though, is that it's got nowhere to go but down. MS has no plans to do anything more with IE beyond the fixes in XP SP 2, while the Mozilla projects just keep getting better and better. Of course, Microsoft just has to flex some of their monopoly power to put a hurtin' on any competitor, but in this case Mozilla has everything to gain and MS has everything to lose.

'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'. Nicely put.

Nicely put? Whatever. The writer seems so excited about his pun about Microsoft wetting itself that he ignored how awkward it sounds using the root word "shake" twice so quickly. He could have said "precarious position" instead of "shaky foundations," or even "trembling" instead of "shaking."

On topic: Microsoft has nothing to worry about from Firefox. Until Microsoft is forced to package Firefox along with Windows, as well as make it the default browser, the Mozilla crew will never catch up.

that graph is exactly why i think everyone here with their own website/blog/whatever should pick a firefox button [mozilla.org] and put it where everyone will see it. firefox is probably the best browser in the world right now, but what good is it if nobody knows about it?

If superior quality software always beat out the competition, Microsoft would not have their current market dominance. Sadly, they do.

I think that superior quality and price does always win, but it may take a long time. Fortunately, there is no Mozilla corporation to go out of business in the meantime. There is nothing that can save the Microsoft empire in the long term, apart from moving out of open-source commoditized product areas, though it has had very little luck with that. Ten years from now, Mi

I think it should be noted that the Firefox homepage makes no mention of 0.9 yet. Though, there is a release notes [mozilla.org] page for it, the links point to 0.8 still. Also, there is nothing in the releases folder [mozilla.org] on the Mozilla.org ftp for it yet.

The work that the Mozilla team is doing is great, and we are all aware that Interent Explorer is worthless right now. Unfortunately they may be winning the battle but losing the war so to speak. Microsoft is sitting out this round because they can afford to.

Microsoft is NOT an innovator, so they need to get their ideas somewhere. I'd be willing to bet that they're biding their time, letting open source do free research and development for them. Then hand pick the best ideas for plugins, tabbed interfaces, etc and incorporate them into IE for Longhorn, which will then be shoved down the throats of the masses in 2006.

I don't agree that MS can afford to sit this out. If non-IE browsers gain too much market share, more and more web sites will make pages that are standards-compliant (as opposed to IE-compliant). And that' quite a "battle" to lose, even for MS.

If non-IE browsers gain too much market share, more and more web sites will make pages that are standards-compliant (as opposed to IE-compliant).

No, if non-IE browsers gain too much market share, more and more web sites will be standards compliant, but with lots of hacks to look fine on IE as well. IE will never (in the forseeable future) fall into such a marginal market share that it would be ignored by developers. Even if it were suddenly 50/50 overnight, or 75/25 in favor of FF, sites would still m

IMO, NS6 did more harm than good for Netscape. Fortunately NS7.1 is pretty stable, but the damage may be too extreme. The combination of NS6, the NS4.X releases (when compared against IE 4 and newer), and the fact that IE comes standard with the OS probably doomed alternate browsers for the MS Win32 platform.

Alternate browsers have a difficult battle ahead. IMO the browser developers really need to push major websites to take advantage of features that IE may not impliment currently and are part of of

I use Firefox and probably always will. My family use Firefox because I installed it on the home computers and they find it just as easy as IE but without the spyware and popups. You probably use Firefox and put your friends and family on it because, like me, you're a Slashdot reading geek who knows it exists and knows it's superior.

The rest of the world uses IE. They will not leave IE either because (and this is the case 90% of the time) it is the internet to them - they know nothing else or because they don't think it's worth the effort. If the IE using public get a better version of IE pressed onto them by MS and we get to keep our Firefox I'd say everyone wins. It's not the perfect scenario but it's better than it could be.

OR, some page designers still design their pages to work in IE, which is basically broken/or not standards compliant, or however you'd like to put it. A poorly coded OR PURPOSELY poorly coded page made to work for IE may not work correctly on a better browser bacause it does not render certain functions wrong or have the same quirks as IE.

The last time we looked at Mozilla Firefox , it was still called Mozilla Firebird and then only in version 0.6. Times have changed. Oh how they've changed. Today, The browser with the identity crisis has a sleek new interface, modern features, and is blowing the doors off its competition... and this is putting it mildly.

Mozilla Firefox ( release notes | roadmap ) is a completely modular browser consisting of a basic, streamlined framework upon which users can add ' extensions ', which (just as the name implies) are essentially plugins for the browser. The idea of less is more has been taken to the next level with this browser. With the default browser, you have just enough browser to do pretty much anything you can on the Internet, while more advanced, custom functionality is reserved to the extensions. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.

When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. The only browsers that come close are Mozilla (of course), Opera , and Konqueror . Safari is also coming along nicely on OS X . The beauty of this browser is not only its functionality... it also lies in its portability. Firefox is currently supported under Linux (GTK+-Xft), Mac OSX, Sun Solaris SPARC/x86, Sun JDS 2003, Microsoft Windows (all versions), and IBM OS/2 , so you can drop it onto almost anything with a modern CPU ( system requirements )

The Mozilla Firefox 0.9 browser

What's new in version 0.9?This is the last preview release before Firefox comes of age at milestone version 1.0, so what new features have been implemented? Well, at first glance all you will notice is the interface has been redesigned with an updated theme. At first I didn't quite know how to take it, but now that I've used it for a while it's grown on me. The new look is very minimalistic, clinging tightly to the focus of the browser itself. Anyway, here's a more complete listing for those of you who are skimming:

* New default theme - Like I said, it sports a new sleek skin (seen in the screenshots of this review).
* Redesigned theme/extension managers & SmartUpdate - Newly redesigned interfaces make it even easier to manage your browser, as well as keeping it up to date with smart notifications.
* Installer updates - Linux now has an installer for GTK2, and the Windows package has gotten smaller - to the tune of 4.6MB.
* Easier migration - Migrating your important information and settings from other browsers has never been easier. Firefox can now import settings from previous versions, Internet Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla, and Opera. This includes favorites, settings, cookies, history and saved passwords.
* Help - An updated online help system is now available. This is in addition to the wonderful Firefox Forums and existing help material.
* Linux look and feel - Much work has gone into the UI, making it adhere better to GTK2 themes. Menus now look like they belong in the desktop scheme like they were meant to be.

Not only were new features added to this release, work continues to keep bugs squashed, past and present, so the browser feels far more stable than it has in the past. Don't get me wrong, this browser has always been ahead of its time in terms of vision and scope, but it has had its fair share of bugs, but so far as I can tell by running this release constantly for the past week or so it looks pretty solid. It hasn't crashed once, and let me tell you this is a definite improveme

'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'

What about:

Internet Explorer, your pitiful life is soon to be ended by my completion. My mercy will allow you to die quickly and rot away. Your miserable "browser" functions is a thread against the race of the free, and you deserve the greatest and most horrible deseases known to man.

Anyway, Firefox cannot beat IE off the top rank. It's simply becaues IE comes with Windows, and no smallwited user would know that there's alternatives, at all.

It's simply becaues IE comes with Windows, and no smallwited user would know that there's alternatives, at all.

Sigh. I've noticed this. People don't even realise it's separate from Windows (come to think of it, a lot of them think Word and Windows are the same thing).

Even some of my friends who are aware that you can have another browser seem reluctant to change for bizarre, and really quite stupid reasons. It's difficult to convince them of the delights of tabbed browsing and gestures.

However, I just don't see IE going anywhere, ever. Not while Windows is on 90+% of mainstream desktops. Feel free to correct me if I am wrong, but just because a product is better, does not mean it will be successful.

I am all for Mozilla/Firefox, but I just can't see it ever landing on my fathers Dell, or my aunt's HP.

unless, of course, I put it there, but they call me enough already with stupid user questions... I ain't giving them a new piece of software.

I have been using the 0.9rc since the day it came out. It's ok, maybe a bit better than 0.8, but hardly this amazing new day for Internet browsing. They squashed some bugs, but some long term bugs and annoyances still remain, and unfortunately it appears they have added one or two. Pesonally, it does not seem any more or less stable, but about the same. Regardless of all that, like 0.8 before it, it is still a hell of a lot better than IE.

After a miss-typed URL sent me to one of those wonderful cyber-squatting "search" sites, which then proceeded to automatically install all sorts of nasty spyware and SMTP zombie malware, I banned IE from my house and removed all shortcuts and Program Menu options from all PCs. I made the decision to go with Firefox, and I can honestly tell you I haven't missed IE one bit, and there's not been one reason that I've had to open up IE again. My wife's been happy with it as well. It's clean, fast, renders pages great, much more informative about page loading status, and best of all it doesn't attempt to install software without my permission. I've encouraged everyone I know to give it a try.

Type in "localhost" in your address bar (assuming you don't have one, or "forgot" to start your web server on your machine).

(this is in firefox.8 btw, I don't use pre-* stuff)

Tell me that's not "cute". Granted, it is based on google, but you could googlebomb some normal non-sites to really annoy people.

Also, i've never seen IE automatically install ANYTHING, when it's fully patched, without the user pressing "yes," and there's PLENTY of sites out there putting ad-ware XPI's out that prompt you every time you go to the site.

I'm a VERY happy firefox user (on both linux and XP), and convert all my friends and family, but FUD can come both both sides.

What we really need is some kind of Firefox IE replacer installer...something that will:Install FirefoxInstall User-Agent Switcher with some pretty buttons(plus tutorial)Remove IE IconAutomatically set all email url links to go to firefox.Import the bookmarks, in the main folder.

As with every other Mozilla/Firefox/Firebird/Whatever-They-Call-It-Thi s-Week browser story, my question is... "So?". The review in no way mentions a single thing that makes this browser "better" or makes me want to take time to download and install a new program. Why? Give me a good, solid reason why I should download a new program, complete with potential problems, headaches, etc. to replace a perfectly good, functional program? I can't seem to think that the Mozilla developers are kind of like people developing new and better pencils. Except this special pencil is hard to find, takes time to figure out how to use, and does what, exactly, that a regular pencil doesn't do? "Come one and all! See our amazing new pencil! It'll revolutionize the hot, exciting pencil industry!! It'll change the way you use pencils! The lead is softer and the wood is harder! Can you imagine how much more work you could get done with this new pencil? " It's just silly.

<BLOCKQUOTE> As with every other Mozilla/Firefox/Firebird/Whatever-They-Call-It-Thi s-Week browser story, my question is... "So?". The review in no way mentions a single thing that makes this browser "better" or makes me want to take time to download and install a new program. Why? Give me a good, solid reason.... <BLOCKQUOTE>

I'm glad you asked because not many peiople have addressed this issue. I recently switched from IE to Firefox and this is unusual for me for I am generally pretty skeptical of the OpenSource Communiy's ability to rival MS at thier own game. However, on this one - FireFox has hit a home run. Let's start with just a few things that make FireFox Better:

#1. An integrated Pop-Up blocker: this sucker runs smooth in the background and doesn't hang for a second. It's so smooth you don't even know it's working. Simply the best.

#2. Tabular Windows: New windows may be opened as Tabs within the primary wondow. It's fast and smooth and makes flipping between loaded web pages a snap. Hey...you can actually load 2 -ro- 3 pages while reading your primary page - all without context switching. Nice!

#3. Excellent Menus! Although I've used I.E. for years, I find the Mozilla Menu more intuitive after only 2 days!!!

#4. Does not Run MS VBScript and ActiveX: theses are nothing but security holes, and for that reason, Firefox doesn't support them. I'm glad.

#5. Every Plug-in Imaginable Available: and easy to find and download!

but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'

Firefox is an excellent browser; I've been using it happily since 0.6.

But while IE can claim that it "came with My Computer" Firefox cannot overcome it but very slowly and only among those who appreciate its superiority and have enough patience to download and install it.

AOL was the last distributor of millions of CDs who were in a position to bundle Mozilla and deliver it to the majority audience that will just take what they get.

There is an interesting post on WebMasterWorld, on how to decrease the loading/rendering time of Firefox. I have tried the settings, and have noticed a mild improvement. Just wanted to share the information.

Be careful, not all sites correctly support pipelining, and will leave you stuck with a half-rendered page that never finishes. I've discovered this over and over with Mozilla in the past (perhaps I just look at really shitty sites), so I leave it off for compatability's sake now. Being correct is more important to me than being fast when it comes to software.

As long as enterprise level business app suppliers write enterprise level web based business apps that require IE plug-in compatibility, and big-business continues to buy these apps either because they are already heavily invested in the particular app, or they are MS shills, Internet Explorer will continue to be the standard browser of choice on Windows machines at enterprise level businesses. But Firefox is quite nice, a huge step in the right direction. I use it almost exclusively except at work.

The article that this story is linked to has Mircosoft ads. So I started thinking...

I have a simple way for us to get rid of or at least reduce the impact of thoughs stupid get the facts adds. CLIC ON THEM. This will cost microsoft money and if we feal like the extra effort we might as well ask for the free stuff that they are willing to send.

Now, I'm reading a lot in a lot of archives that FireFox will never win over IE and there's a possibility this might be true (ie, it might never claim 90%+ of the market as such). However, what I am noticing a lot more is that people are installing FireFox onto their families, friends or workmates computers and these people are happy to/continue/ using FireFox (over IE). The key difference here over other Linux/non-MS install attempts is the/continue to use/ bit. Previously people would try something for a few days and revert back to IE, now they're staying with FireFox.

This sort of behaviour pattern is similar to what happened back in the early-mid 90's when MS Office started to errode the dominance of WordPerfect and Lotus (and also Netscape).

Already my aging father has gone forth and converted at least a dozen of his own friends from IE to FireFox... and thus the chain reaction starts

To me, the biggest point in Firefox's favor its its security settings, and complete lack of support for activex (you can disable activex in IE, but it will keep bugging you every time an activex control tries to load - either in the form of confirmation dialogs or "this page may not be displayed properly" warning popups - really fun when some spyware ridden pages put themselves into a redirect loop if they detect that you rejected their crap, hoping that the user will get tired of the flood of confirmation dialogs and accidently click yes.)

I guess the best way to describe the difference between Firefox and IE is this:- With IE, web pages control the browser. They can open windows, close windows, hide your menu and toolbars, hide your status bar, and do god only knows what else.- With Firefox, the user in in control, including JavaScript security policies and popup controls that define EXACTLY what web pages can and can't do. And the cookie controls are second only to lynx (which had fine-grained control on cookies from the moment they added persistant cookie support;)

And don't get me started on IE's security record and how long IE bugs are public before M$ even admits they exist, much less fixes them...

Firefox is great and has been for some time my primary browser. Or was until a recent release (0.8, I think). The tabbed browsing extension package suddenly didn't work with much of anything - cookies did not work, I could not even log in to some sites. The tabbed browsing extension is seriously deprecated by the developers, so bugs that involve it are immediately rejected.
But I've also seen the developers say that they're not likely to add in the tabbed browsing extensions to the main browser as the extension package is already there.

So I now use the Mozilla browser most of the time because it works well with the tab extensions.

I wish I were in a position to toss some money at firefox to support mainstreaming the tab extensions.

Tabbrowser Extensions [sakura.ne.jp] is a great add-on to Mozilla/Firefox but it's just that--an add-on. When Firebird 0.7 was released, people were misled to believe that Firebird did not have tabbed browsing capabilities built into the browser and had to install TBE. TBE attaches itself deeply into the browser and as a result, it was often unstable when changes were made to the core of the browser. When Firefox 0.8 came out and people were still running their outdated versions of TBE that weren't updated for Fx0.8, they encountered the "No XBL Binding" error. The developers are avoiding this problem with 0.9 by automatically disabling all extensions and themes on the first run, requiring users to redownload and install compatible versions of their extensions/themes.

Firefox is a great browser and is constantly improving. Although the developers aren't implementing all of TBE's features due to fear of bloat, they are listening. We got the confirmation dialog for closing a window with multiple tabs and we may just see a single tabbed window option one day (first step = open external links in tabs, bug 172962 [mozilla.org] recently marked blocking1.0+ by Ben Goodger).

Totally disagree with the reviewer there. The theme is minimalistic indeed, but just a bit too much. Plus, I don't know why it's really called a theme when the icons don't really match styles among themselves.

The previous theme looked a lot better. I'm aware of the lisencing issues, but this one is just plain ugly and minimalistic to the point that when you start the browser you wonder if this is a high school level test application.

Firefox is by far the best browser ever. It is fast, standards compliant, and runs on every platform i support.

The problem is when i develop in firefox. I do some web development, often on a dealine. If i make a stylesheet that looks awesome in firefox, 90% of the time it does not work in internet explorer, which, unfortunatly, is what 90% of my clients use.

So, after i think i'm done, and i test in ie, i know have to go back and fix it, which takes a while as IE is really borked. Therefore, i have to charge more, and my clients are not as happy.

I tell them to switch to firefox, but for some reason, they dont.

It's to the point now that i've installed IE5.5 under wine, and i use that as my main development browser. sad but true. I use phoe^H^H^H^Hfirefox for my daily browsing, for sure, but IE to develop.

Strangely, if i make a site that works in IE, it'll usually work in ff and safari/khtml.

of course, this is all IE's fault.. my tongue is planted firmly in my cheek... but it is something that drives me nuts.

I'm going to guess that anybody named "The Mad Penguin" is probably not going to give us an unbiased review of MS products. Furthermore, the review has a clear fascination with lots of technical gadgetry that an average user could care less about.

Anybody who thinks Firefox should cause Microsoft to fear doesn't understand why Microsoft won the browser war. It's not because they were better, but rather because they were good enough and it came with the OS.

If I were an IE user my task bar would be filled with IE instances right now. Once you go tabbed you'll never go back.

Since Microsoft successfully drove Netscape from our desktops by shoving IE down our throats they've stopped innovating (unless you consider tighter integration into the OS an innovation). In the long run this will seal their doom.

Windows will lose steam (the movement is underway) Their proprietary options may suit your average PC user but in the ever-changing world of computing cross-platform is the wave of the future. Linux will continue to gain market share as will Apple. This may not be apparent to the media but I can tell you that among power users, at least in my circle, we welcome innovation, interoperability, and most of all options. Anti-Microsoft sentiment has never been higher. Microsoft's focus on marketing (and intellectual theft) over innovation can only carry them so far.

The open source movement is simply not something that M$ can buy themselves out of.

'Look out Internet Explorer... your days have been numbered for some time now, but Firefox 1.0 will surely leave you shaking on your already shaky foundations and standing in a small warm puddle'.

This is my favorite line, because it demonstrates how little open source people know about what the average joe wants. The average joe is never going to use FireFox unless some "nerdy" friend comes along and shows it to him/her. First of all you know how many people call the browsers "The Internet", in addition do you know how many people are just happy using what they have, because they may not care or know any better to use another browser.

The days may be numbered for IE in that there is a perceived better browser out there, but the days are not numbered for IE being used as the number one browser. Because most of the people using computers/internet today don't know much more than how to turn on their computer and use some familure applications. Also I love the guys that are using Linux and talking about how the days are numbered for IE.

My question is "How did you get IE installed on Linux?", since you seem to feel the days are numbered and you are running FireBird/Linux. Note I am not talking to the Windows guys that love FireBird, just the *nix guys that claim IE is numbered. It really shows how biased they are.

If anyone bothered to take a look in the help section after they installed and clicked on about they would see this was built on the 8th of june. This is still the old build from last week. Hell the installer still says.8!

Mozilla/Firefox will not have "won" the war until the majority of programmers under MS Windows, upon needing to add an HTML render widget, or HTTP downloader, or FTP downloader to their app, do so by invoking the appropriate DLL from Mozilla rather than the IE/Windows DLL.

Until that day - until the day when one CAN remove IE and all of its component DLLs from Windows and replace them with Mozilla, MS will be the winners of the war.

In case it wasn't obvious to everybody else, the latest ffx release is 0.9 RC. Meaning release candidate. Meaning not yet final bits.

The RC *is* major feature complete, but (as evident with the new theme and extension work) is still needing a fair bit of work before release. 0.9 final is expected in July, 1.0 final is expected in September (at which point I'm more than happy to shove it on everybody and anybody:) ) See the Roadmap [mozilla.org] for details.

In a build I downloaded today, I even noticed that the profile importer now finally gives you the option of which profile to import from (eg IE, Netscape 4, Mozilla 1.x, etc) before actually doing the dirty work. That wasn't present in 0.9rc IIRC.

In other words, I'd wait a little bit longer before pushing 0.9RC on your friends and family. This one's for the testing folks. Of course, anything pre-1.0 is really meant for testing, but this one more so:)

Am I the only one to be exhausted by the footprint of Firefox? I've used FF 0.8 as my primary browser on my Win and Lin platforms and it seems that it even has more memory leaks than IE. And I don't know how it handleds cache, but it is all too fat.

Please, no more feature before a decent memory footprint!... then it will be THE browser

Firefox is Mozilla without the email client, right? It can accept the same modules/plugins and everything, right? Or am I way off?

Firefox is based on mozilla code. They created a stand alone browser that was better, smaller, faster than the mozilla one. They also want to redo the concept of mozilla proper where all the components can either be stand alone application or extensions to FireFox. Chec out the roadmap [mozilla.org] for a better explanation.

Firefox is substantially different, featuring a number of exclusive features and countless refinements. Well over 120,000 lines of code have been added or changed in the browser and toolkit CVS directories since the project began.

Firefox is a web browser and does not do email. For email, use Thunderbird [mozilla.org]. Plugins for Mozilla generally work with Firefox but the extensions are usually not compatible with each other.

Not quite. It is only a browser, but the plugin structure and all that is different from Mozilla. Firefox is based on the Mozilla source, but it's been gutted and reworked to be leaner and meaner, and a lot of things have changed, so plugins and skins have to be Firefox-specific. However, it's tons faster than Mozilla and much smaller, too, and there are already tons of skins and plugins for it. The authoritative resource for Firefox skins/plugins is here [texturizer.net], and more are being ported every day, so chances are

I used to use Netscape all of the time. Not because it was a good browser, it actually felt too big, but because it wasn't IE. When firefox came out, I rejoiced at a small browser that didn't have all the crap that Netscape had built in. Firefox is the answer that I think many of us had been waiting for. Once it becomes more stable, more and more people will be switching over to it.

Unfortunately, IE cannot render properly coded HTML/XHTML/CSS, and therefore webmasters make buggy pages to appear correct in IE.This means the buggy pages appear buggy in FF, which is just how they should appear, causing many people to think FF cannot render and IE is therefore better.

Once (and if) IE is booted off the top spot, you will see a vast majority of webmasters changing their crappy code for something which actually works right.